Do you feel lucky?

My answer to this question on Saturday was yes. Low snow levels - about 3000 feet, the level of Snoqualmie pass - and intermittent showers. So potentially enough snow to make things interesting without complicating driving. With snow at marginal temperatures, through, there's a lot of variability, with a high chance of either a depressing rain-out or a snowy nightmare. At 6am, I checked online and saw that road temperatures were above freezing. I decided to go for it! Fortune (God, to be more precise) smiled down on me with a light snowfall in the morning that did not stick on the roads much at all. It melted during the day in the valley where I was hiking (Gold Creek) once it stopped actively snowing, faster than I would have liked, but all in all conditions were pretty close to exactly the way I had envisioned. I had wanted to take some snow pictures with autumn leaves still around, and was able to do so.

Interestingly, the most harrowing part of the trip by far was the drive back, during which I drove through (more like slammed into) some serious rain and hail storms. It's not like the hailstones were big - they seldom are in western Washington - but they and the rain were falling very thickly and at freeway speeds I could barely see through the windshield. I slowed down a bit (but not very much, since I didn't want to be rear-ended by someone having the same problem that I was), clenched my teeth, glared out the window, and battled my way through those gut-wrenching few minutes.

"Enough stories," you say. "Isn't the point of this blog supposed to be pictures?" It is indeed.

We'll start with one of the most interesting of the lot. The leaves you see are vine maple, and I wanted to juxtapose them with the snowy ridge in the background. It was hard to get the leaf stalks positioned in a good way, and it wouldn't look good if I cropped it to a standard size (like 8x10 for instance). Still, it's interesting.

This next one I also really like, or will like once I edit it. It might even be my favorite. I kind of blew out the highlights on the top left, but probably not so much so that I won't be able to recover them from RAW. The snowy ridge stands out well with the vivid colors in the foreground, and the bits of snow on the rocks enhance the effect, I think.

We'll continue, for the time being, on the theme of the snowy ridge. My densely textural/patterny shots don't always turn out terribly well, but I think this one does, possibly because there are still some clear contrasts, and the red leaves stand out pretty well. I also think it would look better if reproduced at a larger size.

A couple other shots of the ridge, with autumn colors still evident on it:

Now onto some shots from other locations along the trail. I like the contrast of the hemlocks' solemnity with the bright yellow leaves. This is also one of the best from the trip.

This one came from the beginning of the trip; I was able to set up my tripod in the shade of a favorably placed tree, allowing me to keep my camera dry! 1/25 sec, the shutter speed I used for this, was the best I could do. I would have liked a quicker speed, but didn't want to push the ISO up any farther than 500. Maybe next time, if I'm ever in a similar situation, I'll just bite the bullet and do it. In post processing, I'd want to bring out the leaf colors a bit.

I like my compositional idea for this last one, but don't think it works because too much of the snow had already melted; what's left is a bit splotchy. The same was true for my other pictures from this point along the trail.

No snow, and no gems!

Yesterday I visited two lakes, the names of which created a great deal of disappointment. There was only a tiny bit of snow on the edges of Snow Lake, and none whatsoever where the hiking trails were. Nor were there any gems at Gem Lake, a bit farther down the trail. Whoever named them should have called them, respectively, Lake Blowing Dust and Lake Sweat. These names were much more appropriate to my experience. Even though it's October, the trail is very dusty due to our ridiculous dry spell. And sheltered areas were cold, but sunny slopes (like the one you have to climb to get to Gem Lake) were quite hot.

As usual, I'll begin with my favorite compositions. For this first, I must admit that I stole an idea from Ansel Adams. I saw a picture of his that featured some trees and things with a mountain in the background, and the top of the mountain was not in the frame. I liked this, thinking it gave the picture a sense of scale. Ansel Adams' picture took place in mist; mine highlights sunrise light striking the mountain. I like how it ended up.

For this next one, I was looking for a way to portray the beautiful fall colors of the ground cover at high elevations. I found this lone green conifer (not sure what kind) growing among the leaves, and figured that focusing on it would bring attention to the contrasting foliage colors around it. A bit of diffuse sunlight was coming through some trees overhead - perfect! I used f/4 to minimize depth of field and keep attention on the tree.

Now for the partial successes. This one comes from Gem Lake. I'm not 100% pleased with how I positioned the berry bush in the frame...but honestly, it was blowing around a lot so I had a hard time doing so. I think the autumn colors in the background came out pretty well, better than I was expecting. I used f/10 to get most of the bush sharp and keep a bit of definition in the background.

This one looks up what, at some point during the year, was probably a streambed. The sky is a bit washed out, but I like the exaggerated wide-angle perspective.

This view of Snow Lake took some doing to expose properly, and I'm still not satisfied. Even at f/29, I couldn't get quite enough depth of field, so I had to settle for the mountains being slightly out of focus to get the foliage sharp (you can't tell at this size). That said, I kind of like the composition; ironically, this picture looks better compositionally at a larger size.

...Finally, this one I took near Snow Lake. I was attracted to the way the light was beginning to emerge over the hillside. I used a graduated neutral density filter, and tilted it to match the sunlight in the frame. In postprocessing, I would probably want to lighten the foreground and perhaps saturate the colors a bit.

Autumn Advances

So I finally had some time to take some pictures the other day (in good lighting, that is) and by chance found myself at Discovery Park. A few of the trees have fully turned color, while many others still have yet to do so (or never really will, in the case of alders). This led to some interesting color contrasts.

These next two compositions are a result of one such juxtaposition. In retrospect, the green tree in the left half of the frame does not have a strong enough shape to really make the first composition work; it actually would probably look better cropped. The second picture is better. It would have been ideal to include more of the orange tree's trunk in the frame, but the two trees weren't close enough to do it properly (even with my widest lens!).

It was this final picture, though, that turned out to be the most interesting composition of the evening. I'm still not completely satisfied with it...it perhaps could have used a bit narrower depth of field. I was limited in my ability to do so due to the positioning of all the elements (moving or zooming up would have messed with this) and due to physical constraints (i.e. I didn't want to trample off trail). It comes close, though, to what I was envisioning: a moody shot of plants gone to seed with sunset backlighting. I'll have to play with this idea a few more times this autumn.